


The Meaning of Life

by TS2



Series: Path to Redemption [11]
Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:46:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25369324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TS2/pseuds/TS2
Summary: Lawrence and a young friend kill time by discussing life.Spoilers Westworld seasons 1-3Continues Williams "Path of Redemption" arc.
Series: Path to Redemption [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824142
Comments: 4
Kudos: 1





	The Meaning of Life

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place somewhere early in Season 3, in an alternate timeline where William is helping Dolores try and fix things in the real world. Just wanted a vehicle to throw down some general ideas.

LAWRENCE: “You think they’re fuckin’?”

(Lawrence, in cowboy boots, jeans, brown shirt with a bolo tie and a brown outback-style cowboy hat on the dashboard in front of him, is sitting in the passenger seat of a black SUV, watching the front doors of a tall black office building across the street, waiting for a person of interest to exit. Jay, a young man of wiry build [think Jay Baruchel], slightly nervous, is in the driver’s seat, wearing modern street clothes. Lawrence is drinking a cup of coffee, Jay is drinking a mug of tea.)

JAY: “Who?”

LAWRENCE: “Dolores and Will.”

JAY: “What? He’s like, an old man, and she’s, not-“

LAWRENCE: “Oh yeah like that’s never happened before.”

JAY: “No, but, I don’t know, she doesn’t seem the type…”

LAWRENCE: “The type to fuck an old man? What’s that type look like?”

JAY: “Not….her?”

LAWRENCE: “You know they were all over each other back in the old days, right?”

JAY: “Really?”

LAWRENCE: “Hell yeah. Once, they were goin at it on a train we were all on.”

JAY: “…right in front of you?”

LAWRENCE: (slightly annoyed) “No, man, not right in front of me, wasn’t a fuckin orgy. In another train car.”

JAY: “Wow…was he old?”

LAWRENCE: “Nah…honestly, looking back, must have been on the early side of the park opening up.”

JAY: “She wasn’t…all there…self-aware back then, like now, though, right?”

LAWRENCE: “Oh yes she was. At least, from the way Will tells it, she became kinda ‘self-aware’ right after they met. Apparently she got some sorta forced amnesia shortly after. Didn’t remember him again until the day she shot Ford dead.”

JAY: “Wow…actually, ew.”

LAWRENCE: “Yeah, I saw her blow Fords brains out over a crowd of people in their Sunday best. Don’t ask me how I-“

JAY: “No, I mean, ‘ew’ because, technically, she’d hadn’t been aware for that long to make her own impressions. Kinda on the immature side.”

LAWRENCE: “She was a grown women back then, same as now.”

JAY: “No, yeah I get that she LOOKED the same, but I mean mentally, she was just starting to form her own experiences.”

LAWRENCE: “Doesn’t matter, I’m sure she thought like an adult. Not like I was thinking like a child back then; I had memories of being an adult.”

JAY: “Yeah, sure. I get that. But it’s kind of like a, I don’t know, a starting template for a make-believe character. It was stuff put in there by someone else. She hadn’t actually made any choices of her own in her life yet.”

LAWRENCE: “What does that matter? She thought she’d already made a lifetime of choices.”

JAY: “But they weren’t actually HER choices. So her initial ‘real’ choices were based on a perspective populated by someone else’s ‘fake’ choices for her. I mean, if someone yesterday stuck in a lifetime of fake memories in my head of me enjoying tea and not liking coffee, and someone asks me today which one I want, I’m going to grab the tea.”

LAWRENCE: “What if today you decide, ‘Fuck tea, I’m drinking a man’s beverage today’?”

JAY: (ignores the slight) “But unless it’s really badly made tea, if it adheres to what I think tea is supposed to taste like, why would I? I have a lifetime of what I think are my memories, memories where I’m enjoying tea. It could be after a while of actual experiences, for her own reasons, she decides to make new choices, independent of inserted memories. But her initial choices on things she thinks she has memories of are kind of, in a way, baked in. Just seems…unethical somehow.”

LAWRENCE: “Unethical? You have any idea of some of the nasty shit that went on in that park? Fuckin’ a willing, semi-aware, adult-lookin’ woman of suspect memories was pretty much what passed for chivalry.”

JAY: “Yeah, I mean, I can see maybe from his perspective at the time that things were copacetic doing that. I guess because I was a programmer when I first got there I’d feel funky, I don’t know, taking advantage of certain responses I thought probably weren’t really genuine.

LAWRENCE: “You’re saying Dolores didn’t ‘genuinely’ want to fuck Will on that train back then?”

JAY: “Well, I’m sure she thought she did. But I don’t know how much of that was based on ‘inserted’ memories by us on how she thought she was supposed to feel, and how much was actual authentic ‘I want to do the hokey-pokey with this guy because I really like him’ based on her own real experiences.”

LAWRENCE: (amused) “Did you just refer to fuckin’ as the hokey-pokey?”

JAY: (slightly embarrassed) “Uh…yeah.”

LAWRENCE: (more amused) “So you’re saying if you were Will back then on that train, and Dolores started battin’ her eyes at you, you would have said (laughing) ‘No thank you ma’am, I’m afraid I suspect your intentions might not be genuine.’.”

JAY: (embarrassed) “…I guess it would have been a tough call.”

LAWRENCE: “Yeah, no shit. You think Dolores is hot, right?”

JAY: (embarrassed) “Uh, I don’t, really, uh haven’t thought about it.”

LAWRENCE: (serious tone) “You got somethin’ against fuckin’ us robots?”

JAY: (nervous) “What, no! I mean, that’s not what I, if that’s what someone is into, or, everyone’s willing, it’s fine-”

LAWRENCE: (smiling, slapping jay in the back of the shoulder) “Relax kid I’m just fuckin’ with you.”

JAY: (trying to hide the fact that slap kinda hurt his shoulder) “To be honest, Dolores kinda freaks me out. I swear she remembers me from the park. She’ll look at me sometimes with this look…like she wants to step on me like a bug, but doesn’t want to mess up her shoe.”

LAWRENCE: “Dolores doesn’t really LIKE people, it’s more she tolerates them. A few people at least. You ever interact with her in the park?”

JAY: “She was never ‘on’ when I was working. Like I never talked to her. For a while I was responsible for all the Abernathy Ranch wardrobe repairs, and had-“

LAWRENCE: “Wardrobe? Like clothes? Thought you said you were a programmer or somethin’?”

JAY: “Yeah, when I first got there I was a programmer on contract, putting out fires across a bunch of departments. One day, out of the blue, a permanent spot opened up in wardrobe. They needed someone that day. I had a couple of years of Creative Design in college, pay and benefits were better, so I said ‘what the hell, why not.’”

LAWRENCE: “Dressing up robots. Sounds boring as fuck.”

JAY: “You wouldn’t believe how busy it could get. Always short-staffed, insane turnaround times. For some reason, Dolores’s clothes took more of a beating. She needed a whole new outfit more often than others at the ranch, or at least needed repairs. Or needed stains removed.

LAWRENCE: “What kind of stains?”

JAY: “Man, all kinds. Mud, milk, blood. You name it.”

LAWRENCE: “Maybe explains why she doesn’t really like people. She was in those clothes when they were taking a beating and getting bloodied. And unlike me, she remembers all of it.”

JAY: “Yeah…is that why you two aren’t on the same wavelength with regards to everything? You seem less…angry.”

LAWRENCE: “I think Dolores sees herself as some kind of crusader, or prophet. I don’t think like she does. Neither does Bernard. I’m not looking to burn the world down or take it over; I’m just looking to live my life. If we have to shake things up a bit so I can do that, well, I’m all for that. But I’m not better than any other motherfucker walking around out here. Yeah, from what I can remember, I have been through some shit, man. But how the fuck does that make me different from millions, billions of other people out here? Should we all feel good fucking with other people just because we’ve been fucked with? Then where does it stop? Makes no sense. ”

JAY: “You are different, though, in that, technically, your life span is…well limitless.”

LAWRENCE: “Yeah, don’t take it for granted that someone would take that road to immortality just because it’s there. Don’t get me wrong, I plan on making up for lost time and living a looong time. But I don’t plan on living as a can opener or a coffee maker, I plan on living as a man. There’s a cycle to life there that you can’t just brush aside. Change is kinda baked in with being a human being. So me just watching people come and go for a thousand years, just marking time, seems kinda pointless. Speaking of which, am I destined to be firing blanks my whole life or what?

JAY: “Firing blanks?”

LAWRENCE: “Yeah, Will seems to be pretty sure that we ‘immortals’, gods walking amongst you mere mortals, are sterile as fuckin’ mules. I seem to recall quite a few stories of gods fuckin’ everything in sight, dropping baby’s right and left.”

JAY: “Well, I’m not an expert on host biology, but…I’m guessing the lack of any DNA or RNA kinda renders the need to share it via, ah, bodily fluids kind of moot. I’m guessing your biological imperatives, like your ways of ensuring your kind continues on, aren’t going to be met through producing children like most people. I guess you can always adopt, but, legally, jeez, I don’t even know where to start on that one. Or I guess you can make a new host.”

LAWRENCE: “Like a baby robot?”

JAY: “Yeah, I guess.”

LAWRENCE: “So what do I do, every couple of years bring it back and get a new body built for it? Or does it stay a baby robot forever?”

JAY: “Yeah that would be kinda weird, a thousand year-old being that looks like a baby. Like cherubs.”

LAWRENCE: “You mean like a baby cupid?”

JAY: “Yeah.”

LAWRENCE: “Yeah, that would be weird. Would I stick anything in its head when it’s born?”

JAY: “You mean give it false memories? I guess you could. Heck, I guess sticking in a bunch of general world knowledge wouldn’t hurt. Calculus, maybe. How to play the violin. Kung-Fu.”

LAWRENCE: “So you’re saying I could make a super baby robot that knew how to do anything?”

JAY: “Technically, it seems possible. I guess you could skip childhood too and just make it look like an adult.”

LAWRENCE: “Seems too easy somehow. If I was just pushed out into the world and already knew everything, where would I go from there?”

JAY: “I mean, you would have knowledge, but not necessarily the wisdom or judgement in how to use it. Like you could be born a sharpshooter, but not necessarily know who and when to shoot.”

LAWRENCE: “Why not just throw in a college course on philosophy in there along with the sharpshooting and the violin? That way baby robot-”

JAY: “FYI I’m not sure if Dolores likes the term ‘robot’ being used in reference to yourselves.”

LAWRENCE: “Fuck I care? I’M the damn robot. That way baby ‘ROBOT’ has an idea on when to do what with his skills.”

JAY: “Not sure it works like that…The world, people are always changing. Although maybe you could insert memories of previous experiences, situations, and that could help somewhat. But ‘baby robot’ would come across something eventually that would require a real choice. And maybe it would make the wrong one.”

LAWRENCE: “…what would make it MY robot? If all I have to do is press a button and *POW* instant genius life that knows everything, what’s to stop him from being born and saying ‘Yeah fuck this place and fuck you, I’m outta here’?

JAY: “Guess you could insert a need to care about you from the get-go…”

LAWRENCE: “Now THAT sounds like something a god would do. ‘I made your ass, now kiss mine.’

JAY: “Seems…unethical somehow though.”

LAWRENCE: “Also very godly.”

JAY: “…”

LAWRENCE: “…I think if they are not currently, they will eventually be fuckin’. Again.”

JAY: “Can’t see it. He’s like, ancient, and she can barely tolerate him.”

LAWRENCE: “Wisdom, my young friend. Wisdom.”


End file.
